1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a Chinese language input system according to which characters are inputted based on their graphic form, more specifically, to a program product comprising a Chinese language input program, a Chinese language input apparatus, and a Chinese language input method based on characters' graphic form via limited number of keys. The present disclosure relates to subject matter contained in Japanese Patent application No. 2002-011459 (filed on Jan. 21, 2002), which is expressly incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
2. Description of the Related Art
A method is utilized in which Chinese characters are entered on the basis of their graphic form. According to the method, each character is broken down into Chinese character component, i.e. parts of a character. A user specifies a desired character by designating a combination of the character components. Basic education in schools does not adopt the concept of the character components, which is developed for input of Chinese language. When a program or an apparatus for inputting Chinese language is developed, it is not an exception that a set of character components is newly developed with adherence to the given conditions.
Though methods are not unified of breaking down the graphic form of Chinese characters as described above, it is common that each method breaks down the Chinese characters into more than 500 character components. For the input of the character components more than 500 via a few tens of keys, the character components are classified into a few tens of character component groups. According to this, each character component belongs to one of the character component groups. It is therefore required for users not only to learn all of character components more than 500 by heart but also to keep in mind which component group each component belongs.
Most of Chinese characters have a configuration in which a character is composed of plural character components. Users narrow down alternative characters for input by designating character components with their order according to a certain rule which prescribes the composition of character components. Besides the aforementioned character components and character component groups, the users should keep the rule of the composition of character components in mind. FIG. 30 is an explanatory diagram showing conventional input method based on graphic form. As shown in the figure, character components (C.C.) are designated with their order according to the rule of the composition to specify a character group which matches the designated conditions.
Recently, methods for input into a cellular phone and PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) have been developed. According to the methods, character component groups are created so that two keystrokes of a keypad having nine keys can select one of the component groups. More specifically, 81 character component groups are created, and the component groups are further classified into nine types on the basis of character form. The first keystroke selects the features of the graphic form of the character component to be inputted. The second keystroke selects the desired one having the features among the character component groups. The third keystroke selects the features of graphic form of the character component to be subsequently inputted. Further, in the forth keystroke and thereafter, the desired character is selected from the character component group which matches the conditions already inputted. The methods for nine keys are different from the aforementioned ones for a few tens of keys, because the methods for nine keys require two keystrokes, instead of one, to select a character component group. However, the fundamental concepts of both methods are identical each other.
According to the conventional methods of input based on graphic form, both of the first character component to be inputted at the start and the second character component to be subsequently inputted, are selected among the common components created by a certain prescription of breaking down characters. It is difficult for the users, after the first designation of narrowing down alternatives, further to narrow down the alternatives efficiently by the subsequent designation. In other words, because both of the first and second conditions for narrowing down are designated based on the common character components created by a certain prescription of breaking down characters, it is impossible to assign a large number of characters evenly to character groups each of which should be specified by designation.
According to the methods for input, there are components each indicating characters numbering in about 350 out of 6,763 characters prescribed in GB code (GB2312).
The some 350 characters narrowed down as described above, are further narrowed down by the third keystroke. If some 350 characters can evenly be classified into nine groups concerning input via nine keys, the number of characters assigned to each of keys is about 40. As a matter of fact, because the third keystroke is made based on the same alternatives as the first keystroke, it is impossible evenly to assign characters to each key. More specifically, there are cases where about 80 keys are assigned to a key. According to this, narrowing down is too insufficient to actualize efficient input.